Zentangle: mindful art creations

I consider myself a fairly creative person. Not only am I a software designer/programmer, which is creative in itself, but I also like to dabble in various art forms. I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered any art form–indeed, I usually become bored with a particular kind of art and move on to something else. I’m not sure what that says of me, maybe I don’t think I’ll ever be great at whatever it is. I don’t think that’s it, because I just enjoy the “doing” much like the “playing” of games (where I don’t really care if I win–which is different than wanting to have the right answer ;-)).

What types of art have I done? Well, not drawing (at which I do NOT excel) or painting pictures (which is way too much like drawing unless I go abstract, which we already discussed in a previous post). Here’s a list of different types of art that I’ve tried, liked, but haven’t done in at least a few months, if not longer.

• Knitting–can’t do it, don’t know why
• Crocheting–enjoy it, but hurts my hands and i have to watch every stitch or I drop them!
• Scrapbooking–love it, did my daughter one for her 21st birthday, lost my mojo when my son went off to Italy for 3 years–where’s the deadline for HIS book?
• Jewelry making
  • Beads–again with the hands (arthritis)
  • Wire twisting–yeah, also hard on the hands
• Painting things (which is WAY different than painting pictures)
  • Boxes
  • Wood Christmas trees
  • Chalkboard eggs
• Card making–okay, this one I still do occasionally. It’s very similar to scrapbooking. 😉

My current art “phase” is Zentangle. I started doing this on the cruise, but the first book I bought (Joy of Zentangle) was too open-ended for me. I tried some of the tangles but wasn’t sure on how they all went together. So I bought another book, One Zentangle a Day, which I like much better. It’s more task oriented–do this today, now add shading, now add sparkles, now modify a tangle. Much easier for me to use to make the tangles into my own art.

a Zentangle

and another

Today’s tangle, Seuss inspired

One of the things I enjoy the most about tangling is the Zen aspect. Each tangle is supposed to be created in 30 minutes in a mindful manner. That means, you focus on creating the art and you are “in the moment”. If you’ve been reading anything about cutting down on stress, you’ll see those words a lot. You should be in the present, focus on the moment. My yoga teacher says that often during class. At the beginning, we do breathing and focus on our breath to be more aware of “the moment”.

Zentangles are supposed to help you focus–apparently the act of doing this creativity in the moment allows our mind to clear and be more prepared for other creative tasks. I’ve seen artists talking about tangling and then working on their other art or writing or whatever task and having more focus and performing better.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it–how much better would we be at creative tasks if we didn’t let ourselves get bogged down in stress so much?